The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Part 1: Crash Course Literature 302 - YouTube (2)

Thanks, Thought Bubble. And on the topic of me selectively quoting,

we now need to take a short break to talk about the language that Twain uses to describe Jim.

You know what? Let's just do this as an open letter.

Let's see what's in the secret compartment today.

Oh! It's Mark Twain.

I like your suit, buddy. Hi Mark Twain, it's me, John Green. First off, big fan.

Secondly, in your novel, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'

Huck and other characters use the n-word, to describe Jim many, many times.

This is the reason most often cited for the banning of your book here in the 21st century,

so it's important to talk about.

And it's important to understand that when you were writing the book, it was already an offensive term.

Like, abolitionists had been arguing that we should use the term person of color as early as 1825.

And since your work is no longer protected by copyright,

editions have been published of Huckleberry Finn in which that word is changed.

But whether or not you, personally were racist, Mark Twain, your book, I would argue, isn't.

According to the scholar David L. Smith, the word, quote,

“establishes a context against which Jim's specific virtues may emerge as explicit refutations of racist presuppositions.”

It's really important to understand that although Huck seems like a pretty good kid,

the social order has taught him to dehumanize Jim.

To treat him as property, rather than as a person, but Jim's humanity forces Huck to contend with him as a person.

And that's what makes your book so, so good.

Best Wishes. John Green.

It's this recognition of Jim's humanity that leads Huck, in the climactic scene in Chapter 16,

to break with all the morality and religion he knows.

When he learns that Jim's plan is to gain his freedom and gain the freedom of his wife and children,

Huck writes a letter informing his mistress, but then he tears it up.

Huck has been taught to confuse social law with divine law.

And he sincerely believes that helping a slave is a terrible sin that will lead to damnation.

And he has been with the Widow long enough that Hell is a real place for him,

but he ultimately decides that it doesn't matter.

He will risk damnation if it means he can help Jim.

He tears up the letter, saying, “All right, then, I'll GO to hell…

It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.

And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.”

Huck rejects what he has been told is civilization, while also rejecting his father's version of uncivilization,

and for me at least, that's why he's a hero.

As Twain said in his lectures, Huckleberry Finn is a book

“where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”

And that's where we'll leave Huck and his sound heart for today —

unreformed, unrepentant, realizing that he has to follow his own moral path, whatever the risks.

And maybe that's where Twain should have left it, too.

But instead, we get a jumbled mess of an ending that is often criticized,

but which I will do my best to defend next week.

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